Digital service summit opens in Hangzhou

The National Digital Service Export Base Summit Forum kicked off on Monday at Hangzhou International Expo Center, Zhejiang province, during China's First Global Digital Trade Expo, highlighting development trends in the national and global digital service trade.

Held offline and online, the forum gathered some 200 guests to share their experiences and promote deeper construction of digital service export bases. National digital trade experts and representatives from national digital service export bases in cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chengdu attended.

China's Ministry of Commerce said it will promote the innovative development of digital trade with a higher level of opening-up, along with high-quality development of national digital service export base, and the deep integration of digital technology and the service trade, said Vice-Minister Sheng Qiuping.

The ministry will actively support trade in digital products, digital services and digital technologies, create digital trade demonstration zones and enhance the international competitiveness of national digital service exports, Sheng said.

Xu Weihua, deputy mayor of Hangzhou, said that as one of the pilot cities for the innovation and development of the service trade in the country, Hangzhou has comprehensively innovated the development model and made great progress. There are seven pilots for service trade in Hangzhou, which can provide experience for other cities across the country.

At the forum, the China Service Outsourcing Development Report 2021 was released to comprehensively deepen the implementation of innovative development of the service trade.

The value of service outsourcing contracts by Chinese enterprises hit $322.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 30.9 percent in 2021, the report said.

Fang Xiaoying in Hangzhou contributed to this story.